Activating Vacant Spaces

Living Lots NYC is a clearinghouse of information that New Yorkers can use to find, unlock and protect our shared resources. 596 Acres started with vacant lots and remains committed to helping fill these holes.

Reviewing Accountability

Urban Reviewer catalogs over 150 urban renewal plans that NYC adopted to get federal funding for acquiring land, relocating the people living there, demolishing the structures and making way for new public and private development.

Gaining Access to Public Buildings

NYCommons helps New Yorkers impact decisions about public land and buildings in their neighborhoods. It is a collaboration between Common Cause/NY, the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center, and 596 Acres.

Public Hearing on potential Comprehensive Urban Agriculture Plan for NYC

This Event has passed.

This summer, elected advocates introduced a potential law (view it here in the “attachments”!) that would require NYC’s Department of City Planning to develop a comprehensive urban agriculture plan by July 2018 to promote its expansion in our city.

City Council’s Land Use Committee is having a hearing on the bill. Come share what should go in the plan and how it should be developed so that it supports you, NYC’s resident community growers! We will offer specific ways the plan and planning process can honor the roots of urban agriculture in NYC as a form of triumphant resilience of communities of color in neighborhoods that were redlined (watch this video) by facilitating growing by and for our communities. Urban agriculture has the potential to build real neighborhood strength, resilience, and wealth that is shared, and also not to!

Those who cannot attend can email testimonies to the committee counsel, Jeff Campagna, at jcampagna@council.nyc.gov. A good heading for a written testimony is “Testimony for October 26, 2017 NYC Council Committee on Land Use, Public Hearing on Int. No. 1661 requiring a comprehensive urban agriculture plan for NYC.”

Contact mara@596acres.org or (718) 316-3092 x 3 for help preparing testimony, or to RSVP.